Month: March 2019

I agree with the other answers that suggest that you focus on your research work, as opposed to blogging.

Having said that: I myself am an academic, and I sometimes benefit from using my blog to solicit feedback on work in progress. Particularly, I will post the occasional introduction to a paper and ask people to tell me what parts of it are not clear. Since feedback on this specific kind of question is better if it comes from non-specialists in your field than if it comes from specialists, a blog with a random readership base is actually a pretty good way to get it.

Note that I do not recommend this approach to getting feedback if you are not yet at a place in your career where you see critiques as attempts to help you, as opposed to attempts to attack you! Thick skin is a prerequisite in academia in general, and certainly when you ask others to tell you about the problems with your work. Having said that: comments on your blog might be a good way to start getting thick skin!

Good luck with your studies!

English notes

to solicit: When followed by a noun, this means “to ask for (something).” Examples:

We solicited participation in an online survey through national and city LGBT organizations and personal contacts to examine differences in depression, anxiety, alcohol and tobacco use, and body mass index among lesbian, gay, and transgender veterans (n = 252) in suburban/urban and rural/small town locations. (Source: Kauth, Michael R., Terri L. Barrera, F. Nicholas Denton, and David M. Latini. “Health differences among lesbian, gay, and transgender veterans by rural/small town and suburban/urban setting.” LGBT health 4, no. 3 (2017): 194-201.) It’s so interesting to me that neither Trump nor any of his children have served in the US military–and yet, he wants to keep transgender troops from doing so. Could we have, like, at least five of them to make up for his, Melania, Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka’s failure to serve?

The verb to solicit is interesting in that if you use its nominalization solicitation without an object–i.e., without specifying the thing being asked for–the most obvious interpretation of it means to ask to purchase the services of a prostitute. Examples:

My gawd, it’s like the area south and north of Mar-A-Lago is spa-sex-trafficking-ring-massage-parlor-central. Over 200 arrests, women held in captivity from China and several prominent businessman and civic leaders arrested for solicitation in this multi-agency 8-month investig.

“Baffled by his solicitous tone toward Mr. Putin, some people close to Mr. Trump have concluded that he feels vulnerable to Mr. Putin, even if it is in his own mind, rather than because of any damaging information possessed by the Russians.” https://t.co/V97PGQlL5y

A shortage of French-language reading materials in Japan leads me to discover Jules Michelet, who turns out to be one shit-hot writer… Miscellaneous vocabulary from Les croisades and a random volume of Histoire de France.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page for today’s English notes.

Shit-hot: very, very good. Some examples:

That last example is especially interesting because it includes both “shit-hot,” which is quite good, and “shit,” which is quite bad.